Speaker
Dr
Giulia D'Imperio
(INFN Roma)
Description
The CYGNO project has the goal to use a gaseous TPC with optical readout to detect dark matter and solar neutrinos with low energy threshold and directionality.
CYGNO will be part of the CYGNUS-TPC network with several underground laboratories around the world, that aim at reaching a total gas volume of about 1000 m$^3$.
The CYGNO demonstrator will have 1 m$^3$ volume filled with He:CF$_4$ gas mixture at atmospheric pressure. Ionization electrons created by the particles interacting in the gas are drifted by the electric field to a three-layers GEM structure, and the light produced in the avalanche is monitored by sCMOS sensors providing a high granularity 2D track reconstruction. The 3rd coordinate is obtained using the time profile of light, simultaneously measured by photomultiplier tubes (PMT) with fast response. The combined readout of sCMOS sensors and PMTs provides a full 3D reconstruction, therefore allowing to infer the direction of the incoming particle.
Such detailed reconstruction of the event topology gives also a powerful tool to discriminate signal from background, mainly represented by low energy electron recoils induced by radioactivity.
The high reconstruction efficiency with directionality of tracks down to energies of order 1 keV will give to CYGNO sensitivity to low mass dark matter and the potential to overcome the neutrino floor, that will ultimately limit non-directional dark matter searches.
Primary author
Dr
Giulia D'Imperio
(INFN Roma)
